Four stabbed at California University, suspect shot dead

Police shot and killed a male student at a rural university campus in the US state of California after he stabbed and injured four people.

All the victims at the University of California, Merced, were conscious when paramedics arrived Wednesday morning, school officials said.

Two of the wounded were transported to a hospital by helicopter and others were treated on campus.

Police said that two of those stabbed are students at the school and the two other victims are a staff member and a contract employee.

Authorities have not released a motive behind the attack and whether there is a relationship between the assailant and the victims, said James Leonard, a school spokesman.

Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said the assailant entered a classroom at about 8 a.m. with a big hunting knife and stabbed one of the students.

The contract employee went into the classroom to help and “ended up stumbling upon the stabbing in progress,” Warnke said. “I think, through his actions, that he ended up saving this student’s life.”

The suspect left the classroom stabbing a female staff member and a second student, he said. The attacker, who lived on campus, was fatally shot by police.

“Events like this happen elsewhere, but not at UC Merced, which may be still small in student body but large in its sense of community — yet, it has happened,” Chancellor Dorothy Leland said in a statement on the school website.

Authorities said the university campus will reopen on Friday.

Several US universities have been the scene of deadly violence in the last few weeks.

One person was shot to death and another injured Sunday at the Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.

The victims were both students at the university, but the assailant, identified as Jarrett Jerome Moore, was not listed as one.

On October 1, a gunman opened fire at a community college in Oregon and killed 9 people before taking his own life.